


Summer Of My (Brainwashed) Russian Soldier

by Huntress79



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Natasha Romanov, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, F/M, Gen, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Protective Natasha Romanov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24081067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huntress79/pseuds/Huntress79
Summary: When she finally tracked him down in Bucharest, she actually was surprised how well settled in he was. And yet, she knew she had to uproot him again, if he ever wanted to have a chance to get well without a blonde mother hen breathing down his neck.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23
Collections: Id Pro Quo 2020





	Summer Of My (Brainwashed) Russian Soldier

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lassarina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lassarina/gifts).



> written for IdProQuo 2020 and Lassarina. Canon divergence after The Winter Soldier (and Age Of Ultron, to some extent). Steve and Sam are still looking for Bucky, but Natasha isn’t a master spy for nothing ;) WinterWidow endgame. Enjoy! PS: part two is already in the works, where we get to some physical action between them ;)

*********************

Sometimes, Natasha wonders how her teammates have survived so long.

Don’t get her wrong, she loves everyone of them dearly (yes, even Tony), but somehow, the lack of certain talents in each of them astonishes her.

Like tracking down a former HYDRA assassin.

Okay, she can forgive that Tony, for example, has less experience in doing so (and if, any of his AIs has probably more than their creator), but both Steve and Sam are seasoned soldiers, so them not being able to find the elusive former Winter Soldier is truly surprising.

Between her and Clint, it only took about two weeks to get the first hint about his whereabouts. And while Clint went back to help Hill cleaning up the mess that once was SHIELD, Natasha followed that single hint, all the way down to here, a rather rundown corner of Bucharest.

According to the info she had dug up along the way, Barnes had left the USA before Steve made it out of the ICU at Walter Reed. And in a rather straight manner to boot - he only made a couple of stops until Romania.

Which was, somewhat, understandable, even to her. The man probably had heard Russian and any adjacent languages for so long, he most likely did better in a surrounding where the first language was of the Slavic variation then anywhere else.

Crossing the street to the apartment block she had seen him enter before, armed with a bag of groceries, Natasha let her thoughts go back in time. It was quite a surprise when the man who not only helped them train her into what she was nowadays, but also was one of her ex-lovers, turned out to be the long lost best friend of Steve.

Sure, she had known the story of Barnes’ heroic “death” in the Alps, but her brain never made the connection to the man she always called “Yasha” when they were alone. And, _bohze moi_ , that were some of her best memories of being with a man at all.

One of Barnes’ neighbours, from the apartment right below him, held the door open for her, giving her first a once-over, than a smile that Natasha couldn’t help but return. As far as she was able to gather, none of the other inhabitants of the building had any association to either HYDRA or the FSB, so the danger of Barnes being turned back into the killer machine they had encountered in Washington or ratted out to any kind of government were abysmal.

Still lost in thoughts, Natasha made her way up the stairs, only to be pulled into one of the empty apartments on the third floor.

“Why are you following me?”

Barnes’ voice was like steel, a hard edge to it that sent spikes down her spine.

“Let’s get up to your apartment and I’ll explain, everything,” Natasha got out around the metal arm pressed into her throat.

A couple of heartbeats later, the arm was removed, and while Nat took a deep gulp of air, Barnes pushed her back into the stairway, her bag of groceries now in his hands.

Once in his apartment, Barnes only pointed to the table and its two chairs. Suppressing a sigh, Natasha sat down, her eyes never leaving the assassin.

“Talk,” he ordered when he finally sat down, putting two glasses and a small bottle in front of them.

“You don’t need any alcoholic helper to get me talking, Yasha,” Natasha replied, though in a soft voice.

“What did you call me?”

Barnes’ face was scrunched up in confusion, and for a moment, Natasha cursed herself for adding another thing to the (most likely) royal mess that his head was already.

“Yasha,” she began, “which is nothing else than the Russian version of James. And if I remember correctly, this is your name.”

“I… I think so,” he admitted. “Did the man I pulled from the river survive?”

“Yeah, he did, and he’s actually looking everywhere for you.”

Barnes didn’t reply right away, opting for opening the bottle and pouring them both a drink instead.

“There some past between him and I, right?" he finally asked, looking Nat straight in the eye.

“Yeah, as far as I know,” she acknowledged, twisting the glass in her hand.

“And now you’re here to take me back to him? Or are you here to finish me off?”

“Neither nor,” Natasha replied, causing his eyes to go wide, just for a fraction. “Look, the man can be pretty stubborn if he wants to, and I’m actually afraid that he would refuse to see what I see when I look at you.”

“Which is?”

“A man who has to relearn how to be human, after all this time under HYDRA’s thumb, so to speak.” She took a sip from the drink, surprised (or not at all) that is somewhat tasted like Vodka. Probably some kind of Russian moonshine, then.

“But if he’s, as you said, from my past, wouldn’t that help me?”

“Not really.” Nat heaved a sigh. This was, by far, the thinnest line she ever tried to walk. One wrong word, and the man opposite her would either turn back into the killer machine or would get lost in the mumble jumble of his brain for good. “Okay, here goes nothing: Steve has, for all the time I know him now, a hard time to accept change. Most of the time, he just let it pass him by, trying not be fazed by it at all. But sometimes, he is adamant that things stay the way they were, and I can’t help but think he would do the same to you.”

“Trying to get the old version of me back, the one he knows, right?” James concluded.

“Exactly, and that’s the reason why I’m here. I won’t rat you out, not to him, or to anyone else for that matter.” Natasha took another sip. “If you want, I can get you to some place where you can get your memories back with no one interfering with it.”

“And what’s your price for all that? I can’t give you any infos, at least not now,” he challenged.

“No price for me, Yasha. As I said, I’m here to help you. Only one other person knows where I am, and even he doesn’t know my exact location, only that I’m in Europe, trying to figure out what I want from life now.”

For some minutes, the apartment was silent, only the sounds of the streets several floors below them drifting up to them through the open window.

“We two know each other as well, right?” James finally spoke up.

“What makes you think so?” Nat gave back.

“The way you say that name. And that you wanna help me, for no real reason.”

“Except for the one that I want…,” she trailed off before her mouth would spill some of her best-kept secrets. Like that she wanted to help him because she considered him family, somehow, and he was the only one alive after all those years since she turned her back on the Red Room. Or that a very small part of her still had the hope that they could, eventually, rekindle what they once had.

Cause sitting here with Yasha, his pale blue, intense eyes drilling into her whole being, did spectacular things to her. Things that Natasha had successfully compartmentalized ever since she defected to SHIELD.

“What do you want?” James asked, his voice slowly turning into liquid honey.

“Helping you to get your past back, and maybe closing a chapter of my own in the process. But mainly helping you, everything else is a bonus.”

“Were we lovers?”

“What?”

He chuckled, and while it sounded somewhat strange for a moment, Natasha decided that she would whatever necessary to get him doing it more often. It was, after all, a very nice sound.

“What’s so funny?”

“You,” James gave back, his voice still tinged with amusement. “You want to help me, and I appreciate that, but you don’t want to open up as well. Works both ways, doll,” he added with a wink.

Oh, boy. That was a downright lethal combination.

“I come, for starters, from a similar background as you, Yasha,” Natasha began after a few moments. “And like you, my life was twisted and turned so many times that sometimes, I don’t know what’s real and what’s just a fantasy, courtesy of my own mixed-up mind.”

“So, if you help me, you might get some closure yourself?”

“Something like that, yes, but as I said to a good friend who also had his brain taken over: I know what it’s like to be unmade. And if I can help you through the bad and worse parts of brain recovery, maybe just by being there and make you feel less lonely, than it’s more than enough for me.”

James didn’t say anything, just gave her another long look, before getting up from the table, putting the glass in the sink and grabbing a sportbag from somewhere around there. Moments later, Natasha was grateful for her quick reflexes, as he tossed another one to her.

“I’m gonna grab all the things I might need around here,” he gestured to the greater kitchen area, “you could grab my clothes and what’s in the bathroom, please?”

“Sure, but I know that the place where I want to take you has everything you need, in quite some quantity.”

“I know that, but believe it or not, there are some things I want to have with me.” James took a steadying breath before continuing. “Like these ones.” He held up a thick notebook. “All the memories I can’t pinpoint to anything, which is, I admit, quite frustrating and depressing.”

“Of course, Yasha, take with you whatever you want. I just…,” Nat trailed off when she saw him holding up a hand.

“No need to apologize,...”

“...Natasha, but you used to call me Natalia.”

She barely had finished that name when his eyes went wide like saucers and James had to grab the counter to keep himself upright.

“Yasha?”

“It… it’s okay, Natalia, just some memories. That’s how they always return to me, like a big tidal wave crashing over me.” He let out a sound of pain, his breathing speeding up.

“Easy,” Nat tried to soothe him, abandoning the task at hand and crossing over to him. “Easy, James, deep breaths.”

At long last, he calmed visibly down (which in turn prompted Nat to let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding), shaking his head several times to clear it once again.

“Better?”

“Halfway,... hold on, I need to write that down.”

With that, James grabbed one of the notebooks, along with a pen, and began to scribble whatever memories he got back down.

After that, they had the things James wanted with him together in no time, and without looking back (or locking the apartment), they were on the road to their new destination.

*********************

Nat’s safehouse for this part of the world was on a small island in the Sea of Marmara and only accessible via boat. Still, the house was stocked with everything she would need to lay low for quite a while.

Looking around the rooms, James couldn’t help but let out a whistle. From the outside, the house didn’t look much, but the inside was cosy, yet functional.

“Nice place,” he said when he came back to the kitchen, where Natasha was preparing some tea.

“Thank you,” she replied while handing him one of the cups. “I know, it’s not much, but it’s the perfect place to get some order in here,” she tapped the side of her head.

“I can imagine that, yeah,” James gave back before taking a sip from the tea. “Russian black tea?”

“Yeah, with a dash of honey, lemon and cinnamon,” Natasha added. “I somehow know of this, but I can’t remember where I picked it up, or who taught me.”

With a grace that even Nat was envious of, James sat down at the kitchen table, letting his gaze sweep over the landscape outside the window.

“What the heck did they do to the two of us?” he finally asked, his voice soft.

“I honestly don’t know, or at least not every detail,” Natasha replied while sitting down next to him, “but from what I have gathered so far, nothing nice at all.”

“My story is probably more horrific than yours, right?”

“Depends. Do you think repeated mind wipes are worse than having a forced sterilization, masked as some kind of grotesque graduation ceremony?”

“Sweet Jesus,” James breathed.

“Yeah, but I have learned to live with it. Sure, I had some dreams, once upon a time, of having a family of my own, but truth be told, with the life I live, they would be constantly in danger. I couldn’t live with the guilt of being responsible, in some way, should anything happen to them.”

*********************

The End

*********************


End file.
